Essays on topics economics: monopolists, oligopolists, and oligarchs aren't better decision-makers for the society just because they's rich and they ain't the gummint.

Anarchy Favors the Rich

He's a fucking moron.-- Rex Tillerson/2017 (guess who he is?)

Today, states containing just 17 percent of the American population, a historic low, can theoretically elect a Senate majority-- Emily Badger/2016

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. -- Victor Hugo/1845

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.-- Marriner Eccles

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.-- Neil deGrasse Tyson/2015 (possibly earlier)

For the median household in the U.S., a top corporate marginal rate cut from 35 to 20 percent would boost wage growth almost four-fold -- from the current 0.6 percent per year to as much as 2 percent, providing up to $7000 of additional income.-- Kevin Hassett/2017Hassett's argument is that if we stop artificial 'profit shifting' (corporations reporting that their profits were earned in low-tax countries, when they were really earned in the U.S.), then somehow they'll magically decide to raise wages for U.S. workers. It makes no sense.-- Seth Hanlon/2017

17 April 2017

Eventual Data

Another in the grab bag of tricks with these endeavors: events drive data, and not the other way round. Of course, one can find hundreds of books on Amazon with the search 'financial engineering'. 6,296 as I type this. That's a bunch. Beginning, in earnest, with Samuelson, my initial profession of economics slid down the rabbit hole of quant. Political economics has always been about policy, which is just a polite way of saying, "how do I kill my opponents and reward my allies?" Orange Julius Caesar as President should dispel any notion of a higher purpose.

Well, surprise. The announcement of the second tier international economics award comes as a big surprise. Or, perhaps not. These missives have oft mentioned Gordon's book the last few months. His approach is very much the wordy approach to analysis that Samuelson and Solow attempted, successfully, to kill off.

The economics association highlighted Mr. Donaldson's interest in historical research, an unusual focus for a leading economist. In one paper, Mr. Donaldson found that the spread of railroads in 19th-century India increased prosperity by increasing trade. A subsequent paper reached a similar conclusion about the United States.

Study the events, and you'll see why the data turned out as it did.

The economics association also highlighted Mr. Donaldson's research techniques. It said he had "formed and become the principal practitioner of a distinctive style of research, based on important conceptual questions, careful data work and credible identification combined with state-of-the-art structural methods."

One might dismiss such as reactionary, but given Trumpism and Creationism and Isolationism and Populism and the like, why not?

Finally, the real surprise to anyone who's kept track of econ research and punditry over the last decade,

Mr. Donaldson, 38, was born in Canada. He graduated from Oxford University with a degree in physics and then earned a doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics. He joined the faculty at Stanford in 2014.

When I was at UMass, I opted into then out of, the Ph.D. program and took the participation trophy MA rather than put up with just such graduate program professors. They could spit derivatives off the end of the chalk (yes, it was that long ago) with supreme confidence, but hadn't much of a clue about economics. Not a one of them would have written what Donaldson has. Not even as punishment for high crimes.